Decay Inevitable

Elisabeth said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you,” he said. “Cat. She’s been kidnapped. I think she might be dead.”

Elisabeth closed her eyes and for a while the two of them were silent. Then, very slowly, Elisabeth moved over to him, sat by him, and slipped an arm around his shoulders.

She said, “You’ve lost weight.”

“There was a baby. Our baby... I mean, one that me and Cat were going to have. We lost it.”

Elisabeth tensed but did not remove her arm. Her voice was cold when she spoke again. “I don’t know what you think I can do for you, Will. I mean, it’s not as if we parted in a way that would ever be described in the maturity textbook, is it? I’m very sorry about what’s happened to you, but why have you come here?”

“You’re all I know,” he said. His voice had dwindled to breath and little else. “Men came to our house. They were going to kill me.”

“Will? What are you talking about?”

The urgency in her voice couldn’t rouse him from the exhausted sleep that he suddenly fell into. Elisabeth was able to grab a cushion from the sofa before his head hit the floor. One of his hands retreated to his eyes, covering them as though to prevent him from seeing something awful. It was hours before she could get him up, in any sense of the word.

ELISABETH SAID, “THERE’S nobody called Slowheath on the net.”

“Fuck it,” Will spat. He was sitting at her shoulder, watching as her fingers flew over the keyboard of her laptop. The computer’s hard drive softly chirruped and chuckled as it processed Elisabeth’s request and vomited the results up on screen. The window in the basement study showed a mass of foliage, topped by a portion of pavement. Occasional legs would stride by, casting stop-start patterns of shadow across the room.

Will said, “Are you sure?”

“You can see for yourself. Hang on. What about Sloe Heath?”

“Who he?”

“It’s not a he. It’s an it. It’s a hospital in the Northwest. Just outside Warrington.” She jotted an address on a piece of paper.

“I’m not sure.”

“Well.” Elisabeth swivelled to face him. The whiteness of the screen behind her made it difficult to see the cast of her features. She pressed the scrap into his hand. “There’s nothing else. You’ll have to try. Tell the police. They’ll look into it for you.”

“I can’t get the police involved. I’m already on their shit list.”

“What do you mean?”

“Receiving stolen goods. And there was an affray in the town centre.”

“An affray? What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t talk copspeak with me. What did you do?”

“I was in a fight. A knife was pulled–”

“Oh, Will...”

“Not me. I didn’t have the knife. I headbutted this guy. Broke his nose.”

They were quiet for a while. Then Elisabeth said, “That’s why we aren’t together any more.”

“You don’t have to explain, Eli. That was five years ago. I can work it out for myself. But I can’t go to them. They’ll think I did it.”

“What will you do now?”

“I have to go up there. Catriona might still be alive.”

Elisabeth was becoming, in these moments, much as she used to be when she grew agitated by their arguments. She drew breath as though to say something and then fell silent. It was like watching a shy person struggling to express herself.

“The police,” she blurted finally, persistently. “You must go to them.”

“I can’t,” he said, simply. “There’s no time. They wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I’ll back you up.”

“No. I have to go now. Do you still have the car?”

It was as if, in a second, Elisabeth’s rigidity towards him had returned. She gave him a better view of her chin. “Fuck off, Will. My help desk has just closed.”

“Eli–”

“Don’t Eli me. You’re on your own.”

The burbling computer and a slow foot on broken glass in the street filled the silence. Will was grateful that Elisabeth wasn’t pushing for him to leave, but he knew that it wouldn’t be long in coming.

He said, “Can you smell anything burning?”

Elisabeth regarded him blankly. “Do I look like I’m cooking?”

“Well something’s caught. Are you sure you haven’t got anything on the stove?”

A finger of smoke curled around the door.

Elisabeth said, “Shit.”

She flew upstairs to the kitchen, but there was nothing on the cooker. Will checked her when she hurried back into the hallway. Something in his poise stopped her dead.

He put his finger to his lips; his reddened eyes shifted their focus to a point behind her. She turned to find the back door smouldering, a black handprint gaining definition in the grain of its wood.

“What–” she managed, before Will gripped her hand.

“We have to leave,” he said. “Now.”

She nodded.

“Where’s the car?”

They left by the front door. The sun was a fat, orange, cold thing wrapped in mist, low in the too-blue sky. Frost marbled the roads. A heavy woman in a nurse’s uniform laboured over the handles of an ageing bicycle.

“Show me,” said Will.

They hurried to the corner of Dartmouth Park Road as a series of muffled crashes peppered the stillness they’d vacated.

“I was followed,” Will said.